Eugenic States: A Contextual Archive

A Patchwork of Practices

Eugenic ideas were widely contested across the United States, including within the states where sterilization was legal. The heat map below helps makes visible where in the country ideas made it into practice. By visualizing the per capita rates of known sterilizations, the heat map method allows us to see the nation not as a unified area of practice, but as a patchwork of different rates of sterilizations including zero (the grey states had no legal sterilizations, the lightest had legalized sterilization but conducted none to very few). By looking at the sterilization numbers as rates per capita we can control for the highly variable population densities across the United States, both at the beginning of the 20th century and over time. The population numbers used for developing this heat map come from the US Census Bureau. 

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  1. Looking at Eugenic Practices Across the Nation Jacqueline D. Wernimont

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